An Irish peer, he was born at Twickenham, Middlesex, the son of Richard Parsons, 1st Viscount Rosse (c1657-1703) and Elizabeth Hamilton, niece of Sarah Jennings Duchess of Marlborough. He married, 25 June 1714, Mary Paulet, granddaughter of the 1st Duke of Bolton and the marquis de Montpouillon.
Dublin, Baron Oxmantown, 3rd baronet. He was advanced to the earldom of Rosse on 16 June 1718. His family had settled at New Ross company
Wexford at the beginning of the 17th century.
The spelling Rosse distinguishes this Irish family from a Scottish title, Ross. Their son was the 2nd and last Earl of Rosse (1716–1764) of that creation.
They had no grandchildren. In 1725, he was elected the Grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, a post he held for the next six years.
All official records of the Grand Lodge of Ireland prior to 1760, and all minute books prior to 1780, have been lost.
While Rosse is the first recorded Grand Master of Ireland, the belief that he was Grand Master in 1723 and again in 1730 is from newspaper accounts of the day. He wrote the book Dionysus Rising after a trip to Egypt where he claimed to have found Dionysian scrolls looted from the Great Library of Alexandria. After writing his book he founded the Sacred Section(s) of Dionysus.
They were inspired by Richard Parsons book, only two copies of which exist to this day.
"The late Earl of Rosse was, in character and disposition, like the humorous Earl of Rochester. He had an infinite fund of wit, great spirits, and a liberal heart.
Was fond of all the vices which the beau monde call pleasures, and by those means first impaired his fortune as much as he possibly could do. And finally, his health, beyond repair."
Parsons died on 21 June 1741 at his home in Molesworth Street Dublin in the parish of Street Anne.
Parsons ordered the letter, addressed only to My Lord, to be put into a fresh cover and carried by the dean"s own servant to an unusually pious gentleman, the Earl of Kildare.
On reading it the very angry Kildare sent the letter to John Hoadly, Archbishop of Dublin, Primate of Ireland, who immediately summoned the dean for his explanation. By the time it was understood what had been done, Parsons was dead. Today"s Parsons of Birr Castle are not his direct descendants.
There was a second creation of the title Parsons, Earl of Rosse in 1806 for the descendants of a junior branch which had settled at Birr, King’s County in the early 17th century instead of New Ross.
